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The Creepiest Love Songs You'll Ever Hear
Topic Started: Jan 4 2008, 06:05 AM (1,096 Views)
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Marry Me (Heirate Mich)
Released 1995

Achtung!! Ich mag flaumige Häschenkaninchen!!!

Is it me or does everything sound intimidating in German? I just said that I like fluffy bunny rabbits. How many of you thought I was planning to invade Belgium?

I ponder this because I'm watching a streaming video of Till Lindemann, the charismatic vocalist of the theatrical German band Rammstein as he stalks a Berlin concert stage bellowing 'Heirate Mich!!' The rest of the band echo with 'Hei! Hei! Hei!' The teeming crowd chants along while the music pounds like a collapsing factory. It's very menacing and Visigoth-like. Viewer comments posted under the video window nervously ask the same thing: what is he saying?

Heirate Mich. Marry Me.

While you're revelling in the irony, note that there's a slight catch. The girl receiving Lindemann's proposal is a decomposing corpse he's just dug up out of the ground. He's come to 'was noch übrig ist', take what's left of you. Ich bin ein Necrophile.

I admit that Rammstein is new to me even though the band has been around since 1993. In the US, the only German music you'll ever hear is either Mozart or the Scorpions. The latter don't even sing in German. (Rock You Like ein grosser Wind?) When I have dabbled in so-called kraut rock, it mostly sounded like Tangerine Dream with a lot of Moog/Oberheim whacking and programmed drums. Germany practically invented trance music, starting back in the early seventies with works like Autobahn, a 20-minute electronica song by Kraftwerk that was released as a four-minute single. Translated, the lyrics are, 'we are driving on the Autobahn, we are driving on the Autobahn, we are driving on the Autobahn'. I think it's about driving on the Autobahn.

But now my narrow world has been widened. Rammstein ('ramming stone') is an industrial metal band made up of six German musicians who made the radical choice of actually singing in German (most German rock groups try to sing in English). This didn't compromise its international appeal and the band enjoys a substantial following, especially in Europe and Asia - in countries where nobody understands a thing they say. Their cornea-melting live shows include exploding microphones, custard-spewing dildos (don't ask) and enough flamethrowers to burn down the Alps. To say their music is dark is like saying the airline industry has a few flaws. Rammstein's songs explore grim industrial themes, ie death, war, tyranny, hearing someone sing about the Autobahn, etc., so it's no surprise to find a necrophilia song in their anthology; I would have been surprised not to. I'm not a fan of most industrial groups because I find their nihilism boring (yeah, yeah, life is futile, I get it) and I was expecting the same reaction listening to Rammstein's grotesque Heirate Mich. Instead I came away strangely compelled and a budding fan.

Over an eerie drone, vocalist Lindemann begins by singing in third person as a way to set up the song's premise. 'You see him sneaking', he growls, describing a mysterious figure that haunts a church cemetery at night. We learn it is a man, alone and in mourning for over a year, sleeping 'every night hear her stone'. Lindemann's voice, by the way, can only be described as subterranean. He makes Brad Roberts from Crash Test Dummies sound like a castrati.

The drone ends and the band crash into a pummelling beat that continues for a full minute. In the video, Lindemann stays kneeling on the stage, staring expressionless as he changes personalities. When he resumes singing, it's in the first-person as he adopts the persona of the grieving grave sleeper. He notes how the 'bells are asleep' and that 'a red cock' sits on a fence (it's a rooster so grow up already). These are familiar sights to him as he clearly does this every night.

While the band pounds away, Lindemann begins digging, digging, yet another part of his nightly ritual. He is unearthing his love's coffin so he can see what remains 'von dem Gesicht das mir gelacht', of that face that once smiled at me. The minor tonic chord crashing suddenly shifts to the dominant while Lindemann roars of his loneliness, 'an animal among beasts', because her death let her escape him a second time. You can actually hear the chorus approaching and can't wait to hear what it is.

'HEIRATE MICH!!' The crowd of 30,000 strong chants along, bobbing like Saxon pogo sticks. It's loud, frenzied and in German, so if you stumbled into the middle of it without previous knowledge, you'd think, oh great, here we go again. But no, it's a marriage proposal to an emaciated corpse and it sends chills down your vertebrae.

The band drops the volume to sub-temblor level as Lindemann pries open the coffin. As the moon glows above him, he 'deinen kalten Mund geküßt', kisses her cold lips. Now the ewww factor comes into play as he lifts the body out of the coffin. Her skin tears like paper while her limbs fall off her torso. The blast before the chorus returns as Lindemann the lonely animal works the crowd into the chant.

'HEIRATE MICH!!' (Hei! Hei! Hei! Hei!)

There's not much remaining of her so Lindemann seduces what's left. The night is sweltering and 'wir sind nackt', we are naked. Suddenly, the dawn breaks and the rooster crows, forcing an end to his grisly reunion. A frustrated Lindemann decapitates the bird before fleeing. The chanting chorus returns one last time. 'Heirate Mich!!' The song ends suddenly with a last 'Hei!' reverberating in the air.

Wow, I said to myself, this is one of the most disgusting songs I've ever experienced. Why did I love it so much? Is it the obvious tenderness behind the necrophile's actions? The virtuosity of the musicians? Lindemann's sub-human basso profundo and the fact that he has more stage presence kneeling in silence than a dozen Chris Martins writhing in front of a piano? Why do I admire these Teutonic sickos and think they're one of the most innovative music acts I've heard in years? I don't even like industrial music that much, all that tedious distortion and weekend anarchist ennui. Rammstein doesn't need my support. They can sell out a stadium in Sydney to a mass of Australians who couldn't conjugate a German verb to save their Vegemite. So then what was it?

It was the language.

Let me say, I don't speak German. My familiarity with German culture is limited to reading the subtitles of Fassbinder films featuring alienated Berliners who mumble gobbledy-gook. What a chuckle buffet those are. When I retrieved both the German and translated English lyrics to Heirate Mich off the Web, I lined them up side-by-side to keep track for fear I'd stumble out of the song and on to the Autobahn (one more time, 'we're driving on the Autobahn, we're driving on the Autobahn'). So while I struggled to keep up, the guttural percussive quality of the German lyrics fascinated me. It completely fits Rammstein's music, almost like another instrument, especially when it comes pouring out of Lindemann's throat (what a scary figure that guy is).

As for reading the English translation, something unique occurs. Normally when you translate song lyrics, the phrases feel awkward and nothing rhymes any more. On the other hand, Heirate Mich in English becomes a haunting free verse tale of loneliness, obsession and the darkest creepiest form of eternal love. As much as I tried to resist the song, Heirate Mich blew me away. I loved it.

The Germans have always been geniuses at being twisted. It varies in quality, of course. For every Bertolt Brecht and Threepenny Opera, there was a fanatiker screaming at rallies while ordering his minions to invade countries without an invitation. Again, I think it's their aggressive language. If the Germans had switched to speaking French back in the 1930s, they would've just insulted the rest of Europe, not blitzkrieged it.

A coda: Heirate Mich first appeared on Rammstein's 1995 CD Herzeleid and it was the only song in which they did not print the lyrics in German. They decided to include them in a different language because, they figured, it would look less offensive.

The words are printed in French.

The Song
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Code Blue
Released 1981

Before researching these articles I'd never thought much about necrophilia beyond wondering who was sleeping with Kate Moss. I did discover that, while humans largely abhor it, necrophilia occurs often in nature. One naturalist observed a mallard duck copulate with a deceased duck for 75 minutes. I found this interesting if only because I'd no idea naturalists have that much free time on their hands.

Music-wise, songs about necrophilia have a limited legacy. Alice Cooper offered up two catchy numbers during the seventies with Cold Ethyl and I Love The Dead, both intentionally tongue-in-cheek. It wasn't until later that the, um, Golden Age of corpse anthems began with so-called 'death metal' groups like Cannibal Corpse, Necromancer, Entombed, Obituary, blah blah. Death metal necrophilia songs tend to feature graves, shrouds and rotting corpses (OK, every death metal song features them), yet it's difficult not to roll your eyes at it. I love Halloween but when you observe it every day, it's time to get a hobby.

I considered abandoning the whole Romancing The Bones theme until I stumbled across Code Blue, a pounding necrophilia song by the LA punk band T.S.O.L. (The Sons of Liberty). What makes Code Blue stand out from the rest of the cadaver catalogue is how narrowly it walks the line between being grotesque and hilarious. T.S.O.L. were part of California's Orange County punk music scene during the eighties, and developed a small but rabid cult following. The band is largely defunct nowadays, but its reputation lies partly in Code Blue because the song became a minor underground hit (in the punk world, this means an inordinately large people liked it without ever buying it).

Analysing songs about people boning corpses is something I'm new at. If there's an editorial paradigm to follow, I'm unaware of it. All I can say is this song educated me a lot about the dynamic of boy-meets-corpse relationships. Code Blue opens with eight bars of medium tempo skater rock before the band violently switches to a frenetic punk beat while vocalist Jack Grisham sets up an unusual adolescent issue.

I never got along with the girls at my school
filling me up with all their morals and their rules.
They'd pile all their problems on my head
I'd rather go out and f*ck the dead


First off, this doesn't sound like much of a love song; but I found that with necrophilia anthems, you can't be picky. Instead we have an adolescent protagonist who's annoyed with his female classmates, finding them to be judgemental and pious. He's more comfortable locating corpses of dead girls with whom he can perform intercourse. I'm guessing there's a motivation behind this:

Cause I can do what I want and they won't complain
I wanna f*ck, I wanna f*ck the dead


Hmm, OK. Our protagonist has commitment issues. Necrophiliacs are usually afraid of social interaction and prefer the calmness with being around dead people. I for one want to know where he meets them.

The music unexpectedly returns to the medium tempo intro during which we hear:

Middle of the night so silently
I creep on over to the mortuary
Lift up the casket and fiddle with the dead
Their cold blue flesh makes me turn red


Now I didn't know any of this but it certainly makes sense. The trick to meeting dead chicks is finding a mortuary with a 24-hour open-door policy ('Touch what we got, before they rot'). This would be a useful guide for other budding corpse aficionados who don't want the sweat and hassle of grave robbing.

At this point an actual bridge, that rarest of things in a punk song, appears, whereupon the lyrics to the chorus are expanded:

Cause I can do what I want and they won't complain
I wanna f*ck I wanna f*ck the dead
And I don't even care how she died
But I like it better if she smells of formaldehyde!


I'm wondering how accurate this is. Granted, formaldehyde keeps a corpse preserved, but wouldn't the smell compromise the mood somewhat? If you were a die-hard necrophiliac, wouldn't you prefer the festering odour of a decaying body? Just a thought...

The song switches tempo again, returning to its pogo pounding while Grisham qualifies his reasoning:

Never on the rag or say, leave me alone
They don't scream and they don't moan
Won't even cry if I shoot in their hair
Lying on the table she smiles and she stares


Although I'm fairly certain corpses don't have monthly cycles, I'm not sure they're able to crack a smile. But perhaps our protagonist is so gifted at wooing dead females, they can't help falling for his charms.

After a repeat of the chorus, something about f*cking the dead, the song blasts to a finish while clocking on at a brisk 2.09, a very efficient use of time when you consider how much you learn in the song's duration.

Why is this song creepy? Well, despite the obvious shock value, one can hear an amazing amount of dynamics for such a short song. The tempo changes and unexpected chord structures give the song a raw sophistication while never compromising it anarchic energy. Code Blue could easily be turned into a power pop song providing the tempo stayed consistent and the lyrics weren't about, well, f*cking a corpse. The other surprising thing is how easily you can understand the lyrics, not a common attribute to punk/grindcore/death metal songs. T.S.O.L. experimented with different music genres far more than their contemporaries like the Germs and Black Flag, utilising art rock, blues, thrash and other styles. It didn't always work and tested the loyalty of their fans, but one must credit them for trying.

Whether T.S.O.L. ever recorded another necrophilia song, I hope not because it'd be like painting your parachute a different colour before skydiving out of the 'plane. Necrophilia is a very narrow gimmick so there's not much room for variation (if any of you can find room, please keep it to yourself). All I know is that I'll never look at ducks the same way again.

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I Am Stretched On Your Grave
Released 1990

I'm not Irish but I love their slang and I intend to use it freely over the next few paragraphs. I especially admire Irish melancholy. Nobody mopes better than the Irish, which explains why you never see Bono doing stand-up. But while Danny Boy is the sing-a-long lament at the pub, I gamely put my nicker on our last corpse-love song I Am Stretched On Your Grave, one of the creepiest songs to ever find a brogue. Based on the old poem Taim Sinte Ar Do Thuama, many an Irish singer has crooned this haunting work over the years but the best version comes from that qweer bit o'skirt named Sinead O'Connor.

If you remember, Sinead was once the 'Next Big Thing' back in 1990. Her second album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got went to No. 1 with the help of her cover of Nothing Compares 2 U, written by Prince, the world's only purple leprechaun. But, bless her, our bonnie Sinead went off her nut and ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II on that unfunny shite of a comedy show Saturday Night Live. After she got jeered off stage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert as though she were a Bombay shitehawk, Sinead's career went into the bogs for a while and has yet to fully recover.

'Tis unfair. Sure, she seems to go off her head at times and who knows what's up with that bald skull of hers, but she's a feckin' fine musician with one of the most distinctive voices in pop music. Nothing Compares 2 U is a wee bit overrated, but listen to her whole catalogue and it's clear that Ms O'Connor was (and still is) a true talent. As far as crazy goes, well, she's not half a mentaller as Bjork.

The original poem Taim Sinte Ar Do Thuama tells of a grief-stricken young man whose true love has died so he goes to her grave every night, sprawls across it and yearns to touch her again (today he'd just date her sister). While I Am Stretched On Your Grave has been performed in various ways, from sublime a cappella (Kate Rusby) to full-blown electronica bombast (Dead Can Dance), Sinead's version is almost oxymoronic, combining a drum sample from James Brown's Funky Drummer and subtle synth bass with a coda of Irish fiddles. The resulting mixture can only be described as Gaelic funk.

It opens with a lone drum kit laying down a hypnotic groove for eight bars while Sinead's ethereal voice sings how she's stretched out over the grave of a dead lover, yearning to shove her hand through the soil and grasp the corpse's hand. A simple two-note bass line appears, making syncopated stabs every other bar as the drums clip along. She mournfully wishes for them to be together again while noting that 'I smell of the earth and am worn by the weather'. She's torn up with grief for 'a girl I loved as a child'. This stanza suggests Sinead's a bean flicker but as she's changed sexual orientation more often than Van Halen has lead singers, it's more likely she just sang the words as translated. At this point a wave of instruments would normally come crashing in, but Sinead, bless her, wisely keeps the drum-and-bass bed going beneath her while she recalls a past time when her girl was still alive and the two of them got lost in the woods one night. Fortunately, they 'did what was right' and made sure the deceased girl's 'maiden head' remained pure. This implies that Sinead, being no manky spunkskip, chose not to take the girl's virginity as they lay huddled together in the cold woods, ie go up the rasher while pawing her funbags. The girl instead dies later with her purity intact, leaving Sinead with no choice but to go to the grave, undress and perhaps flah her geebox with a flagon. Aye, but her midnight vigil is interrupted by the arrival of various priests and friars who approach her 'with dread' as she lies atop the grave.

This is my favourite part of the storyline because I'd mortgage my house for the opportunity to witness a half-dozen clerics come across Sinead O'Connor as she drops a hand on her womble. Scandalised, the party of monks escorts her out of the cemetery, lecturing her on the sins of diddlin' the flange. Aye, but the next night, Sinead returns yet again: 'I am stretched on your grave and will lie there forever...' The song ends with a set of Irish fiddles playing a churning reel over the funky bass/drum track before coming to a sudden stop.

Seriously, Sinead's rendition of I Am Stretched On Your Grave is near-brilliant, with its ghostly vocals and mesmerising minimalist production. It completely ignores the standard verse/chorus/bridge structure of songwriting and instead concentrates on the poem's narrative while creating a dark aura around the listener. Ordinarily this results in a plodding drone of melodic wash but here it works wonderfully. I Am Stretched On Your Grave is easily one of the strongest tracks on her eponymous second album, which contains several excellent songs including the rocking Emperor's New Clothes. While not technically a necrophilia song since we're dealing with a chaste corpse, it is nonetheless creepy and unforgettable, by turns both beautiful yet disturbing. For the best results, take a few shots of Jameson, turn off the lights, put on the headphones and let the whole song drape over you like a ghost's shroud. If you're really brave try to imagine a nude Irish vocalist with a shaved head lying on a freshly dug grave as she thrums her minge under a full moon. Now there's a bag o' shwag.

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THOSE FREAKING BUTTERFLY SONGS

Butterfly
Released 1997
Performed by Mariah Carey

Butterfly Kisses
Released 1997
Performed by Bob Carlisle

Butterfly
Released 1995
Performed by Candlebox

Butterfly
Released 1996
Performed by Weezer


According to entomologists, there are an estimated 17,000 to 18,000 species of butterfly around the world. Every one of them is presently working in a pop song.

When a butterfly isn't being tossed around one of Lenny Kravitz's seventies' Xeroxed love ballads, it's lulling kids to sleep in a Lisa Loeb children's song. One of them is noodling a where-am-I sax solo on a Herbie Hancock jazz fusion piece, while another is fluttering to a Jamiroquai dance funk number. Wait, take the kids back to the house, Michael Jackson just entered the room with a butterfly track off his Invincible CD. It's his family's favourite album since they're the only ones who bought it. Plus there's Screaming Trees, Andy Williams, Darius Rucker, Yanni, Sarah Vaughan, Sonic Youth, Pete Droge, Wes Montgomery, Tiffany, Amps for Christ, Nozmo King, Ass Ponys, ad infinitum. Artists who have nothing in common with each other are kindred spirits because they did songs about butterflies.

What's with this Lepidoptera obsession? Why are locusts, bees and mantises getting the short shrift while butterflies are juggling offers from Sonic Youth and Tiffany? Perhaps their staggering number of species lets butterflies come pre-customised to the needs of any artist. A polydamas swallowtail form-flits effortlessly into a Tori Amos track, while a martial scrub-hairstreak drops the hammer with the Cult. Massive Attack and a pacific checkerspot work nicely together on an electronica beat. Kylie Minogue shimmies with a Danube clouded sulpher. The Verve can't do without their stinky leaf-wing.

Butterflies are quiet too. While an errant fly will drive you nuts buzzing against the inside of a window, butterflies make nary a sound as they bob about aimlessly. They don't bite, sting or roll dung into little balls. They don't eat your house, build hives in your garage or hang under your dog's chin for a month sucking blood until they're the size of a grape. They don't spread Lyme disease. They don't devour crops. Butterflies are pretty, colourful and mute. What could be better?

The one thing consistent about butterfly songs is that they're nearly all metaphorical. Nobody sings literally about a butterfly's life. How tough could it be? Flutter, drink nectar, flutter, flutter, eat nectar, flutter. Unless it ends up pinned to a wall or devoured by a chameleon, a butterfly has it pretty easy. But when we give one human attributes, everything changes. Now the butterfly can get drunk after work, cheat on his taxes and screw around behind his wife's back (I've yet to hear a butterfly song that addresses any of these but whatever, I can dream). The typical butterfly song is about someone being set free, and not in a parolee sense. The singer is trying to be altruistic by allowing the other person a chance to test their wings and fly off to explore life. If they come back, it's because they failed miserably at it.

But while there's an inherent touchy-feely aspect to most butterfly songs, ironically you'll find just as many rock, metal and alternative bands doing them as you will Jewel. These are the Silence Of The Lambs butterfly songs, where the butterfly is captured, cornered or being stalked. Some outfits relish burying an Aphrodite fritillary under a tidal wave of fuzz and wailing. The butterfly becomes a hapless victim or even a co-conspirator in the band's quest for world domination.

There are at present around 1700 different songs available for download entitled Butterfly or any variation thereof. Promotional literature from my publisher claims I listened to all 1700 titles before making my selection of the four creepiest. Well, if you think I'm that insane.... No, instrumentals were immediately disqualified, as were spoken word, old jazz standards and anything seemingly conceived by a lunatic, ie The Early Sunrise Death of the Turquoise Swamp Butterflies, Opus 11, No. 33 from the album Requiem for the Death of the Last Butterflies, Opus 11. I scanned the remaining titles and looked for obvious novelty numbers like Butterfly Labes, Diapertime Butterfly etc. Gone. I was left with nearly 1000. Who has an idiotic name? HeavyMetalDad, Quit Your Dayjob, undadog, you're outta here. Still I barely made a dent. I gave in and began listening.

The four butterfly songs I selected come courtesy of pop diva Mariah Carey, country artist Bob Carlisle, metal outfit Candlebox and alt-rock heroes Weezer. I felt it was important to feature butterfly songs from various genres so we could see how each artist creates them. Plus, I wanted to shove Mariah Carey and Candlebox into the same room together and see what happened.

Mariah Carey, Butterfly
Mariah Carey's Butterfly is the title cut off her 1997 album of the same name, and it hews the closest to the traditional butterfly song, ie setting someone 'free' so they can test their wings, fly through life, die on the grille of a speeding truck, etc. It contains all the trappings of a Mariah ballad, including the over-produced R&B arrangements and faux-gospel choir that shows up at the chorus like sharks around a sinking ocean liner. Mariah sings how her butterfly can't be kept 'under glass' and that it's time to open her hands and 'watch you rise'. The chorus strains under the weight of 25 redundant altos as they all sing about how we should spread our wings and prepare to fly because 'you have become a butterfly'. This, of course, is yet another use of the stupid phrase 'spread your wings and fly'. If I'm genetically equipped to be sporting wings, I don't need to be reminded to spread them first.

Mariah, of course, hopes that the butterfly will come back. If it returns then they were meant to be. If not, well, f*ck you, butterfly. As the slick music oozes along, she throws in references to wild horses unbridled and flying towards the sun 'abandonedly', the first time I've seen 'abandoned' dressed up in adverb clothing. The song's chorus repeats again so we get to hear the 'spread your wings' directive nine times, lest we miss it. It's a long ballad, nearly five minutes in length, but at least we get those flying instructions drilled into our heads.

Mariah - Butterfly

Bob Carlisle, Butterfly Kisses
This MOR barrel of corn syrup is more like a Death's Head moth dressed in treacle. It won the 1997 Grammy for Best Country Song, proof once again that the Grammy committee votes while taking in the view of its own sphincters. The song is a sappy ballad about a father who relishes the 'butterfly kisses' that his daughter gives him as she's growing up. For those unaware, a butterly kiss is when you press your eye against another person's cheek and blink your eyelashes on their skin. It's the optometrist's version of a high five. As this requires eyelashes as long as a Portuguese man-of-war, I've never attempted it with anyone. I'm funny that way.

Butterfly Kisses begins with the sound of children playing while a tediously sloooowww intro dawdles its way for eight bars. Carlisle sings of watching his little girl praying by her bed as she gets ready for night-night. The butterfly in this song has been reduced to a stunt, a gimmick, a strange ritual performed by people who have Venus flytraps where their eyelids should be. Carlisle happily gives her butterfly kisses while he sticks little white flowers in her hair. They do sweet father-daughter things together like pony rides until she's suddenly 16 and looking more like 'her momma' every day. He's still giving her butterfly kisses and sticking white flowers in her hair. She's looking forward to moving out one day. So am I.

By the end of the song, the little girl's all grown up and about to marry. The butterfly is waiting to get his dignity back. Before she walks down the aisle, the girl agrees to give Daddy her first butterfly kiss and they shove their faces forward like duelling elks. Swish, swish. The song mercifully ends, leaving your life six minutes shorter.

Bob - Butterfly Kisses

Candlebox, Butterfly
Those guys in Candlebox bring their own mutant solipsistic Butterfly to the table, beginning with muted electric guitar picking to vocalist Kevin Martin quietly lays out truncated phrases, 'lies to, love to, feel it all' while working up his Seattle ennui. The butterfly in this song is (wait for it) a form of escape, something that will take a confused grunge band and get them away from the snobby purists who think they're sell-outs. There's not a lot of love in this song but what do you expect? They're from Seattle.

'Fly us home, butterfly', goes the heavy chorus, while Martin asks for a simple change. The song's lyrics never go beyond interrupted phrases, 'set it for, kill for, kill for you', and the tension builds like the caffeine content in their nuclear coffee. He's willing to kill for his butterfly, sending our winged friend into a major power trip. No one's ever offered to kill for me, it thinks, but since you brought it up, go take care of that Butterfly Kisses guy. The music slams into its fullest grunge pile-on as the band wails for the butterfly to fly them home. Then more dashed phrases appear, 'Every life is taken, what for? I've dropped to...' A complete sentence is harder to find in this song than a major chord. The butterfly loads them onto his narrow thorax and flies them home, leaving the Marshall stacks behind. The song ends with the defeated chanting as the guitars build to a wall of fuzz before violently coming to a stop. The butterfly dons his flannel and heads for Happy Hour.

Video not available for this song.

Weezer, Butterfly
Our last creepy butterfly song comes from Weezer and their 1996 release Pinkerton, a concept album supposedly based on the Puccini opera Madame Butterfly. In the opera an American naval officer named Pinkerton takes a Japanese girl nicknamed Butterfly as his young bride. He later abandons her and marries an American woman. Butterfly kills herself (I just saved you four hours). Weezer vocalist and songwriter, the goofy celibate Rivers Cuomo, used the opera as a template for the songs on Pinkerton, closing it with the acoustic Butterfly.

The music is stark, simple acoustic guitar, which Cuomo strums while he recalls going outside with his 'momma's mason jar' to catch a 'lovely butterfly'. The next morning he looks in the jar to find his pet butterfly 'withered all away'. He's filled with regret and says he's sorry for what he did. Here, the butterfly is a suicide, being a representation of the Asian child bride who kills herself after being abandoned. The butterfly in the jar was captured and put on display but later ignored. Of course, the thousands of Weezer fans who bought Pinkerton probably never got the connection with the opera and figured Cuomo was just being Cat Stevens.

The lyrics take a harsh turn as Cuomo sings how he can 'smell you on my hand' and that he can't wash the scent off. 'If I'm a dog, then you're a b*tch' he intones, while filling out his application for Harvard. Maybe he needs some fanstasies, he thinks, 'a life of chasing butterflies'. Apparently, killing just one isn't enough. No wonder he took a vow of celibacy. Still, he's filled with regret, saying he did what his body told him to. Now the butterfly is a ghost who slips away.

The song ends as quietly as it began, with Cuomo repeating 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry...'

Weezer - Butterfly

It's interesting that our four butterfly songs were all released within a year of each other. Apparently, the mid-nineties was a banner time for buggy butterfly songs and I didn't even notice it until later. All four artists use the butterfly in their own creepy way. Mariah Carey's Butterfly is the most standard and overdone. The creepiness is in the bawling way she releases her butterfly, wailing five octaves while the choir goes all tabernacle soul on everything. It's something Mariah does a lot, and it gets tiresome. That she chose to do a butterfly song and then resorted to the most cliche imagery you could ever use was bad enough. Now she's standing in the field tossing the thing like it's a hand grenade while tearfully directing it to spread its wings and fly. It does and it ain't comin' back any time soon, either. It's not as though she's going to be alone, though; she still has the choir.

Carlisle's Butterfly Kisses is beyond redemption. By taking a cutesy gesture and writing a near-six minute saccharine ballad about it, he reduces the butterfly to a quickie stunt. This song earns it bad-creep stripes by the unabashed sickly way he goes all ga-ga about flitting his eyelashes at her like a ravenous squid. I know, I know, it's a loving tribute from a father to his daughter, but the song's mawkish lyrics and overwrought delivery destroy any sublime charm it could've had. Butterfly Kisses is supposedly played at wedding receptions for fathers to dance to with their bride daughters. I cannot imagine who would request such a thing, except that they probably had Every Breath You Take played during the ceremony.

Candlebox's Butterfly gets is creepiness from its detached vocals, sludge guitar work and half-finished lyrics that imply somebody's losing his grip. The butterfly takes on a rare saviour-like role, as they continually ask it to fly them home. As stated earlier, there is no implied love theme in this song except for some leftover bitterness that's revealed at the end. It's the odd interruptions of thought that lend an unsettling air to the song and make you wonder how these guys ever order a pizza. The butterfly is the only normal one in the song.

As for Weezer, the more you know your Puccini, the creepier its Butterfly may sound. But even if you set that aside, the song is a strange and unsettling work with its references to withered bodies and ghosts that slip away. You can glean enough from Cuomo's apologies that something bad happened that went beyond a dead butterfly in a jar. His lashing out combined with his sorrowful regret tells the listener that he's forced the death of something beautiful to him that he was too self-absorbed to notice. Of the four, Weezer is by far the quirkiest, so we can expect they'd do something loopy like base an album on a 110-year-old opera. But to hear Cuomo sing so brokenly about his lost butterfly, it may be better to ignore the Puccini link and let the song creep you out on its own merits.
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My Boy Lollipop
Released 1964

You know the old pat-your-head-while-rubbing-your-stomach challenge? That's nothing. Try playing in a ska band.

The precursor to reggae, ska is typically described as a conscious mixture of American R&B and Caribbean calypso/mento music developed in Jamaica in the 1950s. How polite, how academic. Now cut the crap and say what ska really is: a confused drummer mixed with a dozen rolled spliffs. Jamaican musicians invented it while trying to cover R&B tunes and simply played them wrong. The result was a nervous dance rhythm that resembled soul music with the hiccups.

To understand how tricky ska is to play, give this a try: count out four beats like this: 1-AND-2-AND-3-AND-4-AND-1, etc. in a fast tempo. As you count, tap your hand on the AND part of the beat (the up beat), not on the numbers (the down beat). Now stop counting and sing your favourite song while trying to keep your hand tapping on the up beat. Odds are that you can't do it, proving that you're human. If you can do it, you're a genetic oddity.

The introduction of Jamaican ska music to the US and Europe can be pinpointed to the release of Millie's cover of My Boy Lollipop in 1964. Originally an R&B song, Lollipop was minor hit for Barbie Gaye in 1956, but it became a huge smash for the 17-year-old Millie (aka Millie Small) under the tutelage of Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records. Working from an arrangement by legenday Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin, Millie's catchy version of Lollipop proved irresistable to Western ears unfamiliar with the choppy rhythms of ska. Today a pop classic, My Boy Lollipop is also extremely short and as lyrically profound as a traffic sign. Still, it deserves inclusion as one of our creepy love songs for its coital ska beat and the alternative interpretation of the title and lyrics.

If you failed my ska test, you can try and tap along with Lollipop as long as you don't cheat and do it like a white man. As with most ska recordings, the up beat is heavily accented on Lollipop via the pianist's right hand in unison with Raglin's popping guitar, a la boom-CHICK-boom-CHICK-boom-CHICK... After a bouncing intro Millie sings (she practically chirps) how her boy lollipop makes her heart 'go giddy-up'. While it's my nature to go medieval on anyone who'd rhyme 'lollipop' with 'giddy-up', I shan't because it was written in the fifties, when pop songs were more innocent and lollipops were a bigger part of the candy culture than they are today.

He's as sweet as candy. Millie sings about her lollipop beau, setting up the next glaring rhyme of him being her 'sugar-dandy'. So not only is this guy an all-day sucker, he's also a dandy one to boot. Again, I'm not making fun, I'm just observing. By now you should've caught on just how obvious the lyrics are. If her next verse was 'never ever leave me' (which it is), complete the phrase 'because it would _____ ___'. If you can't figure it out, I'll assume you're a proud graduate of the public school system.

The song's B section consists of I love you's and I need you's, along with a reference to her wanting him 'to know'. Again, finish the phrase 'I'll never let ____ ___' (please tell me you can). After a harmonica solo that's so basic it makes Bob Dylan sound like Vladimir Horowitz, the opening chorus repeats, leading to the final line of him setting her 'world on fire'. OK, last rhyme challenge. If her heart's on fire, this would make him her one ______. The song fades with the boom-CHICK-boom-CHICK rhythm still bouncing inside your head like a dyslexic kangaroo.

If the above analysis seems brief, it's because the song is slightly longer than a typical TV commercial and as deep as a sink. It could be almost considered a ditty except that for all its cutesiness, My Boy Lollipop is possibly one of the dirtiest songs to ever hit the charts. Of course, it takes a suspicious mind that sees double entendres everywhere to notice the perverted meaning to this song. Thankfully, I have that suspicious mind.

Allow me to present my case. First, I don't know any self-respecting guy who'd accept 'lollipop' as a term of endearment from his girlfriend. ('Andy, Sarah, Nigel, this is my boyfriend Butch. But you can call him Lollipop. Everybody does.') If that's his real name, ie Lol E. Pop, then fine, we can assume he's probably someone who had to win a lot of playground fights. But it's more likely that 'lollipop' is a euphemism, one as obvious as all the rhymes in the song. Oh yeah, she looovvves her boy's lollipop, it makes her giddy-up, it's sweet like candy, it's sugar dandy. Need I go on?

Double entendres in song lyrics are not UFOs. They stand out like funnel clouds and most genres of music, be it R&B, salsa, merengue, blues, rockabilly etc., have employed double-meaning lyrics. My Boy Lollipop was originally an R&B song, a genre notorious for sexual innuendo, and when you add the humping rhythms of ska combined with the kittenish charm of Millie's voice, you have a deliciously suggestive creepy love song.

As for ska, most Jamaicans abandoned it for the slower beats of reggae and rocksteady after the cannabis kicked in, but it lived on in the seventies through UK groups like the Specials and the Beat. Today, there's always some earnest US outfit trying to play ska. American critics love bands that play ska because they'll never achieve mainstreamm success. (Don't throw No Doubt at me, either. They didn't get big until they stopped playing ska.) The charm of ska's off-kilter rhythms is also its biggest Achilles' heel. It's a homogenous style of music that's difficult to vary in performance because once you do, it ain't ska anymore. Regardless, ska made a trite R&B song into an infectious hit single and when it's at full blast, ska is some of the happiest music to ever trip over a ground beat. Just remember, 1-AND-2-AND-3-AND-4-AND-...

The Song
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I Touch Myself
Released 1991

As I write this, I'm watching a Divinyls music video. A seductive woman with thick hair the colour of Russia glides around a set filled with bedroom props. She's singing an infectious post-new-wave rock track with so many hooks you could snare a school of fish with it. There might be a guy playing guitar with her, I'm not sure. Who cares? She keeps returning to that same line: 'I touch myself...'

This is yet another reason to love and fear the Internet, when anybody can pull up an old music video of a nineties' song about masturbation. Indeed, that's what Divinyls' 1991 hit I Touch Myself was about, and not in that sneaky Cyndi Lauper She-Bop way, either. Even protozoa knew exactly what Divinyls were singing about, yet the song was so catchy that Baptist missionaries probably caught themselves humming along with it.

Divinyls were primarily the duo of singer Christina 'Chrissy' Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee who hailed from Australia. Labelled a one-hit wonder in America, the group maintained a long career Down Under, releasing six albums and charting numerous Oz hits. Their sole crossover hit was I Touch Myself, which hit No. 4 in the US and No. 10 in the UK.

That said, I now have to write about I Touch Myself without knowing any slang phrases for female masturbation beyond the Irish ones I used earlier. Sure, I know the male ones, choking the chicken, milking the snake, slapping the bishop etc., but I'll be damned if I can recall any for women and I'm not Googling for them either. I don't even like the word masturbation. What drooling zoologist conceived that noun? Did mastodons practise it first, lying on their furry backs whle singing I Tusk Myself? Therefore, I'm going to make one up. Ready?

Pressing the Buzzer.

Back to the video, which I'm still watching. It begins with a thumping tension-laden guitar with the attention-deficit editing techniques of an MTV video before locking into a mid-tempo rock beat. The divine Chrissy with her hooded eyes and pursing lips wastes no time singing about what she's up to. 'I love myself', she coos, while adding that she wants me to love her. The interactive requests continues as she searches herself (wink wink). I'm supposed to 'find' her, or at least perform a thorough search. She's the kind of adoring chick every guy wants and probably won't find unless he last name comes with a Swiss bank account.

I'm at the chorus. She's telling me she doesn't want anyone else. She's pressing her buzzer now while claiming she's thinking about me. 'I touch myself', she sings. I'm seriously considering moving to Australia. Suddenly the song's bridge appears. It's about 90 seconds early but I don't care. Two other sultry women have shown up too, wearing gold-lame short shorts. All have buzzers to press. I'm learing that I'm the one who makes her 'come running'. I make her shine, I make her laugh and she writes me cheques with lots of zeros. I'm all hers.

The guitarist is wearing a red frilly outfit seemingly stolen from Air Supply's dressing room. I want him to get the hell out of my sight line. Chrissy is closing her eyes now while imagining I'm with her. She tells me she would die if I ever ignored her. She adores me so much that she'll 'get down on my knees' and do anything for me. I tell her to make the guitarist change that stupid outfit.

We're going through the chorus again. She's pressing her buzzer so much it's like gynaecological Morse code. She's still thinking about me too, only me. There are black-and-white insert shots of Chrissy lounging under a sheet with her hands wandering south of her equator. Good Lord, now she's talking to me. 'I want you', she says in an adorable Aussie accent. 'I touch myself'. I put everything I own in her name (boy, is she gonna be disappointed later on).

The video is finishing up now. Chrissy's touched herself approximately 38 times over the past four minutes while one of the gold-lame girls changed into a black fetish outfit with a riding crop. The erotic impact is muted, though, since the guitarist is still dressed up like Air Supply. The track fades with Chrissy repeating over and over, 'I touch myself, I honestly do'.

While there are few if any hit songs as erotically charged as I Touch Myself, I can honestly say it's not that creepy even if others may disagree. If I was an honourable man, I would've excluded it from the series, but I'm not and I haven't. I wanted an excuse to watch the video anyway. Besides, I Touch Myself was a hit because it's a very well-constructed melodic pop song, cheeky and fun, which is why the blunt lyrics don't sound gross. The early arrival of the bridge is clever and Chrissy Amphlett's vocals are both sonorous and seductive. Considering how suggestive it is, the song received little resistance from broadcast censors, who tend to be a little touched themselves at times. As for the video, it's simple yet very alluring, without the pretentious nonsense that shows up in a lot of Madonna videos. I'll take it over the Material Girl's bizarre Erotic any day.

Amphlett, by the way, went on to garner critical raves on the musical stage playing Judy Garland opposite Hugh Jackman in the Australian production of The Boy From Oz about the late talented showman Peter Allen. As for guitarist Mark McEntee, I just hope he's not still wearing that red get-up.

The Song
Edited by FamousGroupie, Jun 19 2009, 12:04 AM.
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Drive
Released 2000

The following chapter is what's known as a failed experiment.

Allow me to explain. While listening to various women artists one afternoon in search of creepy love ballads, I came across Melissa Ferrick and her lyrically graphic song Drive. A lesbian singer/songwriter since the early nineties, Ms Ferrick has amassed a small but loyal following. She works as an independent artist in a musical vein similar to Ani DiFranco, playing eccentric alt-folk songs while busily accompanying herself on guitar. While her songs rarely if ever get any radio airplay, fans know her catalogue and seem especially familiar with her song Drive, judging by the people I heard singing along with it at her shows (I've seen the YouTube videos).

Now comes, as the Bard says, the rub. Drive is a song about lesbians for lesbians by a lesbian. I was already out of my element to the power of three. It's also about performing oral sex, and not in a coy hinted-at way. If you can count to five on one hand, you know exactly what Drive is about; it's that obvious. Since I honestly don't know anything about the nuances of oral sex between lesbians, I attempted to analyse Drive by imagining that two gay women had offered to act out the song's lyrics for me. Upon submitting my critique, an editor sent me the following email (this is not made up).

I have to confess I found your entry for Drive creepier than the song itself. Treating lesbians like complete freaks while describing their sexual practices as if you're at the zoo is not, I believe, appropriate for this or any other article. Sorry if I strike you as 'politically correct', but this made me see red. If you've shown it to a lesbian and they're OK with it, I'll withdraw my complaint. Otherwise, would you be willing to cut this entry and do a new one on another song? To my mind, it's beyond hope. - Ed.

It was apparent to everyone that my experiment in writing lesbian erotica was a miserable failure and offensive to boot. I was clearly out of my element and had no business describing oral sex between two women based on Drive. However, since there was no time to do a rewrite, we unfortunately have to print the analysis as originally written, with the offensive parts deleted. Sorry for the confusion.

I'm here inside the lesbian boudoir. Life partners Regina and Cassie have graciously allowed me to observe while they demonstrate something they call DELETED. Melissa Ferrick's song Drive will play in the background, which it usually does anyway.

The song starts with a slow, loping mix of drums, bass and acoustic guitar that somewhat resembles Sheryl Crow's Leaving Las Vegas. The beat here, though, is meant to be suggestive.

'If you want this,' Melissa fairly groans, 'you're gonna have to ask.' She repeats this several times.

I watch as Regina whispers something into Cassie's ear.

'Whatever you want,' Melissa hisses, adding that she'll give it to her, give it to her 'slowly' until 'you're just begging'. She'll do that and more, but 'you're gonna have to ask'.

Regina whispers again in Cassie's ear. Cassie lies back and DELETED.

The loping music (basically porn folk) continues as Melissa describes how 'your mouth waters...fingers trembling'.

Following the song's lyrics, Cassie arches her spine and DELETED. Regina DELETED under Cassie's DELETED.

This cues the chorus, 'I hold you up and drive you alllll night...'

I watch as Regina begins DELETED to Cassie. It looks pretty much like how men DELETED women except Regina is DELETED.

'I hold you up and drive you...' Melissa repeats over and over, like a Sapphic mantra.

The next stanza has Ms Ferrick mentioning all the different locations where she'd like to 'hold you up', like the kitchen, the shower, the back of a car, inside 'your office' during business hours.

Regina takes Cassie and DELETED DELETED DELETED DELETED DELETED DELETED.

'I know how you like it,' Melissa says with relish (she's yet to sing a note).

Cassie's mouth waters as DELETED DELETED DELETED while Regina DELETED DELETED DELETED DELETED. Drive, drive, drive...

Things become more graphic. Melissa's voice takes on a shaky, eroticised tone as she says this is where she wants to live, 'right here between your hips'.

I watch as Regina DELETED Cassie while DELETED DELETED DELETED.

The vocal track sounds weird, with a second voice that sounds as though it's muffled added to the mix. The lyrics keep repeating over and over, 'I'll hold you up and drive you...'

Finally, Cassie DELETED DELETED DELETED as Regina DELETED DELETED and straightens up.

The song fades out, its grinding rhythm still running through my head.

With its slow, oozing beat and deadpan phone sex vocals, Drive's creepiness comes from the voyeurism that is all over the track, as though you are eavesdropping on an unsuspecting couple. There's nothing self-conscious or artificial about Melissa Ferrick's delivery, and many listeners will get uncomfortable listening to it. Drive is not an obscene song, but her performance makes it sound a hundred times more graphic than the lyrics already are. Everyone sounds turned on in the song. Who know what the drummer was doing to himself? Suffice to say, lesbians and the guys who get off on them will flock to Drive the most. Almost everyone else will just feel weird.

As for my trip to the boudoir to watch Regina DELETED Cassie, I secretly shot a video and posted it on the Web. Just search under DELETED DELETED DELETED DELETED and you'll find it.

The Song
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Whiskey Lullaby
Released 2003

After I left college, I spent three ignoble years working as a DJ at an East Texas country music station, a job I was as qualified to do as I am at teaching economics to the World Bank. If I learned anything before getting fired, it's that there's nothing more depressing than a depressing country song. It's been many years since I've followed country music enough to see who's wearing the Hat nowadays (all country music stars wear the same hat. It's called the Hat). While searching for a creepy country contender for this article, I noticed how little things have changed. The wrist-slitting ballads of Alan Jackson today sound exactly like the wrist-slitting ballads of George Strait 20 years ago.

So what lead me to the Brad Paisley/Alison Krauss duet recording of Whiskey Lullaby? Easy, the damned title. There are 100,000 country songs with 'Whiskey' in their title and they're all either partying two-steppers or ballads that tempt you to put a pistol in your mouth. Whiskey Lullaby is definitely the latter and besides being fatally depressing, it's also creepy beyond all reckoning. It's one of those pulpy songs where not enough people can die a horrible death while cramming in every cliche about 'the bottle', drinkin' this, drinkin' that, drinkin', drinkin', drinkin'. Everyone's a-drinkin' and a-dyin'. Yee f*cking ha and pass the revolver. Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss are as inoffensive as one can get in country music and both are virtuosos on their respective instruments of guitar and fiddle. But while they didn't write Whiskey Lullaby, I cannot fathom why they chose to record it. Fortunately I managed to score a tape of the recording in the studio and heard the following conversation between Paisley and Krauss, which I've transcribed.

'Howdy, Alison.'

'Howdy, Brad. What do you have for us today?'

'A real dandy number called Whiskey Lullaby. It's about a guy whose wife cheats on him and so he gets all piss-drunk 'n' blows his brains out. She feels guilty so she gets all piss-drunk 'n' blows her brains out.'

'Wow, that's great. Do they have a dog? Maybe the dog can get all piss-drunk 'n' blow his brains out. Woof!'

'No, there's no dog. But at least the two of them blow their brains out. We got that to work with.'

'Then let's get started.'

(Acoustic gee-tar picks a chord, cue dobro, cue booze.) 'So I'll sing how she put him out like he was a "midnight cigarette". He spends the rest of his shattered life tryin' to forget how she broke his heart.'

'Wait, Brad, what's a midnight cigarette? Is that any different than a regular one?'

'It's a cigarette that makes you get drunk. See, at this point I'll sing how the rest of us watched as he gets p*ssed on whiskey tryin' to drink the pain away. But never could get himself drunk enough.'

'Wow, I love it when they can't get drunk enough. When do I sing?'

'Right here, when you join me on the chorus. We'll sing how he put the "bottle to his head and pulled the trigger".'

'He shoots himself with the bottle?'

'No, with an ole gun. The bottle made him do it. It was the only way he could drink away her memory.'

'Really? Wow, I recorded 10 songs last week with that line. People sure like to drink away memories a lot.'

'Yeah, I've recorded 20. Anyway, we finish the chorus singin' how we found him face down in his pillow. There's like blood everywhere. It's really creepy and gross.'

'Love it! Love it, love it, love it.'

'Then we bury him under a willow tree, like we always do with suicides in country songs. The angels show up and sing "a Whiskey Lullaby". It goes like this: "La la-la la la la laa...".'

'So I only sing on the chorus?'

'Heck, no! Why should I have all the fun? You get to kill the woman who broke his heart.'

(Acoustic gee-tar interlude, more dobro fills, pick-up truck blows a gasket.)

'Okay, Brad, I'll come in here. I guess everybody's gossipin' about her but they don't know that she blamed herself for him drinkin' and shootin' himself.'

'Yeah, so now she starts a-drinkin'. She spends years hoping people don't smell "the whiskey on her breath". I love it when they reek of booze.'

'Wow, I see that she's drinking her pain away now. I was wonderin' when she was gonna start. She still can't get drunk enough, though.'

'Now I'll join you on the chorus again only this time she puts the bottle to her head and pulls the trigger. It's the only way she can drink away his memory.'

'Wow, that line again. So is her head all splattered too?'

'I reckon so, 'cuz we find her face down in her pillow. She's holdin' on to his picture. Her brains are splattered all over it. Ain't that great?'

'Golly, that's so tragic and creepy. I love it. We even get to stick her under the same willow tree.'

'Yeah, that reminds me. We gotta plant more willows because the bodies are startin' to pile up. Anyways, you and me will take it out from here where the angels show up one last time and sing them "a Whiskey Lullaby. La la-la la la la laaa...".'

'Aw, Brad, I love this song. Are you sure we can't get the dog to drink away their memories 'n' then blow his brains out? Woof!'

Whiskey Lullaby follows a standard equation that Nashville songwriters have used since the Grand Ole Opry was still a surly teenage Opry: cheatin' + drinkin' + shootin' = ballad. So what makes this double-suicide bourbon ditty creepier than its pathetic brethren? Well, for one, the guy goes off the deep end within the first line of the song just because she broke his heart. You can almost see this chump staggering around waving his Jack Daniels bottle with puke running down his shirt. The thing is, women get cheated on far more often and you don't see them diving into the scotch trough. They just call Alanis Morissette and fill her in. Here, everyone's drinkin' away their pain and memories until they end up face down in the pillow following a point-blank pop to the top.

Then there's the damn willow tree. Somewhere there's a willow surrounded by the corpses of the 50,000 losers who've died in country songs. Just once bury someone under a birch or something. As far as the angels that show up, they're not even singing Schubert's Ave Maria or a Gregorian chant. Instead, they're jamming on the 'whiskey lullaby', 'la la-la la la la laaa...', which means they either have a twisted sense of humour or will take any request you give them. This song creeps me out no end while laying me out like a medical cadaver. Yee f*cking ha.

The Song
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